How your business can save money by analysing employee timesheets

Knowing your costs inside out is vital to all successful companies. In order to help with analysing one of the biggest costs to any business – its staff, many sectors are turning to online timesheets systems. Once you’ve made the decision to invest in an automated system, how can you save money? Here are some top tips on saving money by analysing employee timesheets:

Save time

We all know the old adage ‘time is money’. Online timesheets make it easier to monitor and assess the performance of your employees and therefore save you time. You will be able to easily view working hours, holiday time and other absences rather than spending time trawling through inefficient paper, spreadsheets or other locally-held records. Any queries about employee time spent on particular tasks or projects can be quickly answered, leaving you free to concentrate on the important decisions you need to make. The convenience of 24/7 online access is a great advantage in today’s world of ‘on the move’ and remote working.

When timesheets are linked to payroll, you can save even more time because the calculations are automated as well as the necessary communications between various staff and departments e.g. between line managers and payroll staff.

Sectors such as Construction, with employees on variable patterns of work and remote working sites will especially feel the benefit of time saved from having online automated timesheet systems.

Spot trends

With automated timesheets you can go a step further than tracking attendance alone. Astute employers will want to evaluate their resources to assess whether they are getting value for money. You may have hunches about your most productive areas and members of staff but how can you easily check them? Computerised timesheets make it easier for you to back up your intuition with hard data about what are the most and least cost-effective areas of your business.

Once you can see accurate and well-presented data collated from your online employee timesheets, you have the ability to analyse the contribution of employees to individual projects and the overall business – this helps you spot trends and evaluate efficiencies. For example, you may find that certain projects have been over-resourced at the expense of others or vice versa. You can then act to reprioritise and ensure your business is working in the most profitable way.

Be more strategic and use automated timesheets to decide whether you are getting a return for your investment and whether a task or project is worth pursuing.

Pitch your bid

You’ve fine-tuned your data, honed your cost-effectiveness, now you are better placed for seeking other profitable work. Analysing employee timesheets ultimately gives you the information you need to help you put together well-informed pitches or bids for other work.

You can use your timesheet information about time spent on a particular project to inform your quotes to potential clients. This way you can be confident about your costs and your profitability. Clients will also be impressed by your knowledge about your own data and the improved level of service you can provide for them.

Planning ahead

Analysing timesheets lets you see the bigger picture. Having detailed and accurate data to hand gives you clearer insight for planning ahead. Not only can you ensure that all current project requirements are met but you can see where your capacity lies for future projects. You can analyse the data from timesheets to make financial projections and also to control productivity.

Automated timesheets are an excellent tool to help organisations of all sizes to become more efficient and save money – they help with the day-to-day running of your business, but also equip you to look to the future.